Dark Lore/Legilimency
Dark Lore: Legilimency Incantation: Legilimens Though muggles (and the ignorant) think that use of this spell allows one to read the target's mind at a glance; However the mind isn't a simple thing, and one cannot simply read your every thought. The mind is an immensely complex thing, made all the more difficult be each mind forming itself differently depending on the person, how they learn, and the effects of their upbringing on their mind. All that being said, use of this spell CAN allow one to read surface thoughts from a person, or if used in extended sessions, delve into deeper memories. As this spell is an invasion of one's mind it's considered a dark spell, though of course that's due to it's typical uses and the fear of it's capability. This spell was originally created by a paranoid tyrant who wanted to be ensured the loyality of all in his Kingdom. Privy to his thoughts and plans during the creation of the spell and testing of the spell, his wife simultaniously created the study of Occlumency to protect herself from the effects, and when he finally acted on his plans to conquer and control a nearby muggle Kingdom, she killed him. If this shows anything it's that assuming you know everyone's thoughts or have their complete loyality is a deadly mistake. Sifting though a person's memories to find something useful (much less something specific you want to know) takes time. Unless a person is specifically thinking of something you want to know, getting them to recall the information (and destroying the mental walls they may errect) can take weeks or months of work. Of course the defense to this spell is training your mind to protect what you want to know, and learning to put up powerful mental walls and defenses against attacks (Occlumency). Oddly enough, exposure to the Imperius Curse also helps train a mind to resist Legilimency as well. As for uses for this spell beyond the original intent (reading minds to ensure loyality) and the expected (reading an enemies mind to find weaknesses), there are a number of other uses. First, this is the best and easiest way to train a mind to resist itself and the Imperius Curse. Another use is that when coupled with the Imperius Curse, you can control somebody and read their thoughts, which with the additional use of the Switching Spell, will allow you to completely control somebody, mind and body (though not is spirit/soul, which is what's trying to repel your assault). While this has obvious uses for spies or infultration, another use is that when you're occupying someone in this manner (which is much more effective and provides less resistance than posession) you can see what they do, why and how their mind reacts to the commands their body gives. In one of my Experiments I was able to watch someone who was a criple try to move a broken limb and though the body was unable to do it, the mind still wanted it to. I observed a similar case with a person who's legs had never worked right. Both of these cases were the mind working correctly and the body being too broken. I found it possible to use spells to give them replacement limbs and using this method, retrain their minds to use the new magical limbs. It might even be possible to use this to replace a limb with something completely different or more complex than a limb, and retrain a mind to use it effectively. The opposing is also true. You can often find people who's body works fine, but who's mind is damaged. Using this method you should be able to try to help fix the broken mind, and restoring it to healthy. However, repairing the mind in practice proves much more difficult than the body. While in theory this should be possible to help cure insanity, mental illness and other mental issues (aftereffects of the Cruciatus Curse) in practice I have been unable to actually achieve these results. I mostly blame this on the fact that for my experiments I only have those whose minds have been magically damaged, and it would be much easier to work on those with natural injuries first, and once the methods have been proven, moving it over to help repair magical maladys. Magic works much better on non-magic injuries (no resistance) as opposed to those whose minds have already been infused with magic multiple times. I theorize this is possible, and once I have the ability to fully test it and confirm it, I'll post my results here. As an additional note, while the typical thought about Legilimency is that it's used to read thoughts, a well trained Legilimens can also use the spell more intricately to read the emotions of the target. It takes less energy, but more control, and can be equally as useful in time critical situations, when the general feel of a target's emotions is enough information. For example, to determine if one is lying, this simplified version is more than adequate, and much more simple. It can also be used in a strong-handed manner to literally break into someone's mind and attack it from inside at ones leisure. Though much more time-consuming, it's also much more effective at finding out what one needs to know from the mind of another. ---- Next Page Category:Dark Arts Category:Dark Lore